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Cortana in the UK – Get it here!

Having dutifully installed the upgrade to Windows 10, several of my friends and colleagues encountered a small but annoying issue. Their very own personal assistant was absent without leave.

As shown below.

This short post is a step by step guide (with lots of pictures and not many words) to getting Cortana up and running, it is simple and is all about language. Cortana is available in quite a few languages and more are coming all the time. It’s no mean feat to create the environment for so many languages for the system to function effectively.

Ian Moulster, a colleague of mine on the Windows team at Microsoft UK created this video to show us what we need to do, watch it here. There are some detailed steps behind this video, which is why I published this step by step guide internally on our Microsoft Yammer group internally. It seems like a good idea to get it out into the public domain as well.

So here we go.

By default you may not have the English (United Kingdom) Language pack installed and some of the screenshots you see, may be different to mine. Persevere and if you need any extra advice just drop me a line on twitter @edbaker1965 or via email at edbaker@microsoft.com.

First open the new settings screen (there are a few ways to do this) I use the Windows Key and then Click the settings Icon as below.

From there select Time and Language followed by the Region and Language sub menu.

This screenshot is taken from the 64 BIT Enterprise ISO, although yours shouldn’t look too different if you used the English (united Kingdom) as the language and region.

Click on English (United Kingdom) Language (language pack available) and get this (even if it doesn’t say language pack available, still click it)

Click Options and you get this

Click Download

Also click download alongside all the possible choices offered. You get this

Ok so I have done all that Ed, so why does Cortana still say this

That’s because you are currently only half a job harry! Follow on further down the path to Cortana Cuteness.

This will take some time to install all these bits. As shown below

Click on settings under Speech

Under speech language select the drop down and choose English (United Kingdom)

Go back to the main Region and Language section (it may still be installing) I said it would take some time.

Choose additional date, time and regional settings, you get this (the old control panel dialog)

Select make this the primary language under Windows Display Language. Next you need to log off (I would always reboot at this stage, but technically you just need to log off and back on).

Select Cortana and she MAY still not be there so choose settings in the Cortana menu.

Hooray we can turn her on now, so do so!

If you already have a Microsoft Account (Hotmail, live, outlook) or other such account already associated with your Enterprise microsoft.com account you are now finished and can start teaching Cortana how you speak.

Finally to use Cortana you must either have a Microsoft account associated to your domain account if this is an Enterprise domain joined work machine or you must log on with a Microsoft Account (live.co.uk, Hotmail etc.)

Although if you are down with the kids and already use an Azure AD account to log in then you will still need to associate a Microsoft Account to use Cortana.